LETTERS

Dr David van Gend says some right and appropriate things in his condemnation of Queensland Labor on the issue of same-sex marriage (News Weekly, July 23, 2011).

However, he overturns his own apple-cart by citing human rights lawyer Frank Brennan as showing the way forward: “I think we can ensure non-discrimination against same-sex couples, while at the same time maintaining a commitment to children of future generations being born of and being reared by a father and a mother.”

Dr van Gend applauds the antics of the federal parliament in 2008 which achieved equality for homosexual couples in every area except marriage. Finally, he quotes Claude Lévi-Strauss’s view that the human family is “based on a union of two individuals of opposite sexes who establish a household and bear and raise children”.

It is a common enough stance today, adopted by many conservatives. But it is concessive, naïve and self-defeating.

Granting homosexual couples all rights short of marriage will achieve nothing in the long-term. It works on the premise that homosexuality is acceptable; it concedes all ground to the homosexual lobby and then baulks at the last jump; and it dwells in the Fantasy Land that somehow people will listen to the wisdom of Lévi-Strauss when they have already trampled all over the commandments of God.

Opposition to same-sex unions, to make consistent sense, needs to be opposition to all same-sex unions on the grounds that homosexuality is inherently unnatural and morally wrong.

Rev. Dr Peter Barnes, Revesby, NSW

Truth about pornography

Sir,

I wish to encourage you to print more articles like Anna Krohn’s “How cyber-porn breeds cyber-cowards” (News Weekly, July 23, 2011).

What Anna Krohn does is to use someone, namely Dr Gail Dines, who is hardly likely to be seen as a rednecked supporter of causes espoused by your publication, to tell the exact truth about pornography. It also serves to make evident that even “the ranks of Tuscany” can scarce forbear to condemn the harm that pornography does.

In general, I have in recent times become very impressed with the way in which News Weekly is proceeding.

The thing that I like most is that you all have become extremely forthright without appearing to be merely a propagandist for (unfortunately) unpopular bodies like the DLP, Right to Life, and similar organisations.

John McNamara, Miranda, NSW

Ignoring facts about capitalism

Sir,

Jeffry Babb’s claim (News Weekly book reviews, July 9. 2011), that it is now accepted everywhere that capitalism is the only system in history to sustain prosperity and a decent standard of living for all in the community, is about as sound a claim as saying that anthropogenic global warming is settled science. Like AGW, Babb is plugging the popular line while ignoring the facts.

The establishment of capitalism was associated with radical falls in standards of living for most, despite growing GDPs. New South Wales was settled as an overflow for those forced by poverty into criminality by English Enlightenment capitalism. Twentieth-century standards of living were supported by the mixed economy as a tension between capitalism and socialism. That is passing.

Peter Jonson’s book Great Crises of Capitalism that Babb reviewed is part of a genre of books that, for all intents and purposes, papers over the periodic failures of contemporary capitalism. Especially confusing is the claim that the U.S. initiation of the global financial crisis was the result of government policy.

Perhaps Mr Babb is not aware that the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank is a private profit-making corporation. His treatment of fiat money certainly suggests some confusions there.

Regardless of who made the policy, economic theory assumes that private enterprise makes rational decisions. Sure, the U.S. government took away the guard rails and turned the signs around the wrong way, but it was the private sector which drove over the cliff.

To say that credit creation should be in the hands of commercial lenders, not government, is the conclusion that only comes from adopting all of the above errors. I hope I misread the way it appeared to be an opinion that News Weekly wanted its readers to follow.

Dr Garrick Small, Rockhampton, Qld

DLP’s return to national politics

Sir,

July 4 was an infamous day; it was far from an independence day in Australia. This day in history saw the balance of power delivered to the radical and hypocritical Greens party.

One silver lining on an otherwise dark day was the swearing in of Victoria’s Senator John Madigan from the Democratic Labor Party.

The DLP has not held office within federal politics for over 36 years. It is truly remarkable that a party that suffered political oblivion so many years ago should reappear and be able to announce itself as a true labour party.

The return of the DLP could not have come at a more opportune time. The ALP has deserted families and workers just when these battlers need a labour party that will support them.

During a recent debate with Dr Richard Dennis on climate change at the National Press Club in Canberra, Lord Christopher Monckton proudly mentioned, while wearing a DLP tie, that the Democratic Labor Party is the only labour party worth voting for.